Professor Melanie Pilkington

Tier (II) Canada Research Chair

Department of Chemistry, Brock University

X-ray Crystallography at Brock

The tradition of small molecule X-ray Crystallography at Brock Univeristy began in 1965 with Professor Mary Frances Richardson.  In this page you will find photographs which depict how the field of small molecule crystallography has changed at Brock over the last 40 years. We are pleased to have a  Bruker Apex II CCD diffractometer with a Kappa goniometer (see below) and a Oxford Kryoflex low temperature device.

The success of our research depends on being able to characterize the structural properties of our compounds in the solid state. Once we know exactly what the arrangement of metals and ligands are in our materials, we can then begin to study and understand their physical (magnetic and electronic) properties.

Prof. Mary Frances Richardson teaching her group how to centre a crystal for a Wiessenberg photograph in 1991.

The group in summer 2010 huddled into our

X-ray room. From left to right: Nick, Qiang, Shari, Justin, Roger, Roland, Dr. Pilkington and Niloo.

Our diffractometer and photos of our X-ray lab - Summer 2010